Until the GOP can generate a coherent message, conservatives need to persuade independents and moderates about all the damage caused by Obama and the left in Congress.
Thanks for posting this article. I see it as one of the best descriptions of Obama’s character that has been written. Pinging for more exposure.
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Burke spoke of the nature, purpose and nobility of revenge, so let's see if historical purpose and social analysis does a better job than drama:
If it should still be asked why we show sufficient acrimony to exact a suspicion of being in any manner influenced by malice or a desire of revenge, to this, my Lords, I answer, because we should be thought to know our duty, and to have all the world know how resolutely we are resolved to perform it.Burke is making this speech as his "Speech in Reply, First Day" at the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for his vast crimes in India in Burke's capacity as leader of the Commons chosen to present the case for conviction on Impeachment.[We}...are not disposed to quarrel with the Divine Wisdom and Goodness, which has moulded up revenge into the frame and constitution of man. He that has made us what we are has made us at once resentful and reasonable.
Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he ought not be a judge in his own cause. From that moment revenge passes from the public to the private hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished. My Lords, it is transferred as a sacred trust to be exercised for the injured, in measure and proportion, by persons, who feeling as he feels, are in a temper to reason better than he can reason. Revenge is taken out of the hands of the original injured proprietor, lest it should be carried beyond the bounds of moderation and justice. But, my Lords, it is in its transfer exposed to a danger of an opposite description. The delegate of vengeance may not feel the wrong sufficiently: He may be cold and languid in the performance of his sacred duty. It is for these reasons that good men are taught to tremble even at the first emotions of anger and resentment for their own particular wrongs; but they are likewise taught, if they are well taught, to give the loosest possible rein to their resentment and indignation, whenever their parents, their friends, their country, or their brethren of the common family of mankind are injured. Those who have not such feelings, under such circumstances, are base and degenerate.
Lord Bacon has very well said, that "revenge is a kind of wild justice." It is so, and without this wild austere stock there would be no justice in the world. But when, by the skilful hand of morality and wise jurisprudence, a foreign scion, but of the very same species, is grafted upon it, its harsh quality becomes changed, it submits to culture, and, laying aside its savage nature, it bears fruits and flowers, sweet to the world, and not ungrateful even to heaven itself, to which it elevates its exalted head. The fruit of this wild stock is revenge regulated, but not extinguished, -- revenge transferred from the suffering party to the communion and sympathy of mankind. This is the revenge by which we are actuated, and which we should be sorry, if the false, idle, girlish, novel-like morality of the world should extinguish in the breast of us who have a great public duty to perform.
This sympathetic revenge, which is condemned by clamorous imbecility, is so far from being a vice, that it is the greatest of all possible virtues, -- a virtue which the uncorrupted judgement of mankind has in all ages exalted to the rank of heroism. To give up all the repose and pleasures of life, to pass sleepless nights and laborious days, and, what is ten times more irksome to an ingenuous mind, to offer oneself to calumny and all its herd of hissing tongues and poison fangs, in order to free the world from fraudulent prevaricators, from cruel oppressors, from robbers and tyrants, has, I say, the test of heroic virtue, and well deserves such a distinction.
Could they have done this, if they had not been actuated by some strong, some vehement, some perennial passion, which, burning like the Vestal fire chaste and eternal, never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining the rights of the injured or in denouncing the crimes of the oppressor?
I quoted it in the Clinton era, it is proper here as well.
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He must be neutered in 2010 and sent packing in 2012.
Ping of interest.
Hmm...having seen the inaugural celebration I can sort of see where Burroughs got the purple toga and the pack of killer baboons story...
Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
I’m sending it out to my list, whether they like it or not.
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BTTT!!!
it’s the conduct of a divine right monarch,
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The reincarnation of George III ???